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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975152">Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon During the Muggle Second World War, Part One</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damien_Le_Cercle/pseuds/Damien_Le_Cercle'>Damien_Le_Cercle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:09:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,097</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975152</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damien_Le_Cercle/pseuds/Damien_Le_Cercle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Edinburgh Magickal Review offers this account of the perspective of Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon just prior to and during the Muggle Second World War.<br/>This accounted is based on primary documents and interviews.<br/>Minister Spencer-Moon left behind copious documentation. In addition to these archived documents (viewed only recently, and, for the first time, by reporters for The Review), oral history accounts were provided by the Minister’s granddaughter, Charlotte Spencer-Moon, and her classmate from Hogwarts School, Phoebe Avery-Cartin (both Class of 1983, House of Ravenclaw), who stated to reporters that they surreptitiously viewed the Minister’s memories in his Pensieve during Christmas 1976.<br/>The editor of this account is Damien Le Cercle, Associate Editor at The Review.<br/>Other reporters contributed to this account.<br/>(Founded in 1991, The Edinburgh Magickal Review is committed to journalism covering the Magical and Muggle Worlds, for a Magical readership, and in compliance with the International Statute of Secrecy 1689, 1692.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon During the Muggle Second World War, Part One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The Edinburgh Magickal Review offers this account of the perspective of Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon just prior to and during the Muggle Second World War.<br/>This accounted is based on primary documents and interviews.<br/>Minister Spencer-Moon left behind copious documentation. In addition to these archived documents (viewed only recently, and, for the first time, by reporters for The Review), oral history accounts were provided by the Minister’s granddaughter, Charlotte Spencer-Moon, and her classmate from Hogwarts School, Phoebe Avery-Cartin (both Class of 1983, House of Ravenclaw), who stated to reporters that they surreptitiously viewed the Minister’s memories in his Pensieve during Christmas 1976.<br/>The editor of this account is Damien Le Cercle, Associate Editor at The Review.<br/>Other reporters contributed to this account.<br/>(Founded in 1991, The Edinburgh Magickal Review is committed to journalism covering the Magical and Muggle Worlds, for a Magical readership, and in compliance with the International Statute of Secrecy 1689, 1692.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Edinburgh Magickal Review offers this account of the perspective of Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon just prior to and during the Muggle Second World War.<br/>
This accounted is based on primary documents and interviews.<br/>
Minister Spencer-Moon left behind copious documentation. In addition to these archived documents (viewed only recently, and, for the first time, by reporters for The Review), oral history accounts were provided by the Minister’s granddaughter, Charlotte Spencer-Moon, and her classmate from Hogwarts School, Phoebe Avery-Cartin (both Class of 1983, House of Ravenclaw), who stated to reporters that they surreptitiously viewed the Minister’s memories in his Pensieve during Christmas 1976.<br/>
The editor of this account is Damien Le Cercle, Associate Editor at The Review.<br/>
Other reporters contributed to this account.<br/>
(Founded in 1991, The Edinburgh Magickal Review is committed to journalism covering the Magical and Muggle Worlds, for a Magical readership, and in compliance with the International Statute of Secrecy 1689, 1692.)  </p><p>25 December 1976, dawn<br/>
Unplottable Magical property, near Grove End Road and Waverly Place, Saint John’s Wood, London: </p><p>Phoebe Avery-Cartin awakes and pokes her head out of the Hippogriff-down comforter, then, reluctantly, puts her bare feet down on the frigid hardwood floor. She crosses the room at speed, as quietly as a mouse in a Muggle poem about Christmas, and takes from the wardrobe a thing that can only be a Muggle “terry-cloth bathrobe,” a thing of which she has heard; putting it on, she also puts her feet into what can only be Muggle “fuzzy slippers.” </p><p>Back in the bed she has just vacated, Charlotte stirs and mumbles, “Wuzz goin on?”<br/>
“Shush. It’s Christmas morning. Nobody’s awake yet.”<br/>
Barely speaking aloud, communicating by gesture and silent agreement, they sneak down the staircase. At the entrance to the kitchen, they see the house elves quietly bustling to get breakfast ready. It is fit to be a feast. One bows, the rest pretend not to notice them. They creep round the corner and down the parquet-floored corridor. Phoebe tries door knobs, peeks inside rooms; Charlotte shivers and yawns. Then Charlotte says,<br/>
“That’s my grandfather’s study. I’m not supposed to go in there.”<br/>
“But you’ve been,” Phoebe defies her. Phoebe pushes the door all the way and strides boldly in.<br/>
The curtains over the window are sheer and give onto the small, walled garden behind the house. Dawn’s light is oblique, pale, warmthless. The room’s furnishings and sensibility remind Phoebe of etchings she has seen in Muggle books of the Muggle British Raj in India.<br/>
“What’s that?”<br/>
“It’s my grandfather’s Pensieve. I’ve never been.” Charlotte meets Phoebe’s gaze and does not blink. They do not speak. Together, they walk to the stone basin in its alcove. Together, they plunge their faces in. </p><p> </p><p>April 1938<br/>
Unplottable Magical property, Grenoble, Isere Souverainete, Muggle French Republic:<br/>
Secret meeting amongst:<br/>
*Bartolomej Cizek, Provisional Minister for Magic for the realms then corresponding to the Muggle polity known as Czechoslovakia (including all or parts of the traditional Magical realms of Bohemia, Moravia, the Sudeten Mountains, and the Carpathian Mountains);<br/>
*French MfM Hippolyte Rameau;<br/>
and<br/>
*British MfM Hector Fawley.<br/>
Cizek demands to know the position of the French and British Magical communities in the event of Muggle war.<br/>
The French and British positions may be summerised as: Our hands are tied. We shall not be able to intervene. You should be on your own. You may wish to make your dispositions accordingly.<br/>
(MfM Fawley’s successor, MfM Spencer-Moon, later publishes the minutes of this secret meeting to the Wizengamot.) </p><p>January 1939<br/>
British MfM Fawley is seen as not up to the task of dealing with the Grindelwald threat. He is replaced. His successor is long-time Ministry careerist Leonard Spencer-Moon. </p><p>January 1939<br/>
The Muggle Prime Minister, having just taken a report from his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and dismissed him for the night, is exasperated to find that portrait of the little man speaking to him, something that has not happened in a year and half. </p><p>May 1939<br/>
British Ministry of Magic, Under Ground, Beneath Whitehall, London:<br/>
MfM Spencer-Moon receives a confidential briefing on the status of Magical artefacts hidden in Jerusalem, under the jurisdiction of the Muggle polity known as Jerusalem Subdistrict, Mandatory Palestine.<br/>
Spencer-Moon accepts the reports that the concerned artefacts appear safe from both Muggles and Dark Wizards at this time.<br/>
A Magical diplomatic row ensues. Spencer-Moon is obliged to present himself before wizards’ councils in Istanbul, Cairo, Sophia, Baghdad, Herat, and Bombay. Some of the councils claim unbroken status to ancient times, some admit to merely provisional status, given the flux of Muggle polities. At every council, witches and wizards demand to know whether the British Magical community stands with Muggle Imperialism or against. Spencer-Moon pleads that non-intervention has always been and remains the policy.<br/>
(MfM Spencer-Moon later publishes the minutes of the secret meetings to the Wizengamot.) </p><p>August 1939<br/>
To visit his Magical constituents in Liverpool, MfM Leonard Spencer-Moon travels the Muggle way: He boards the City-to-City Express at Broad Street Station. </p><p>September 1939<br/>
The Muggle polity known as Nazi Germany or the German Reich invades &amp; quickly conquers its neighbour, the Muggle polity known as the Second Polish Republic. Muggle polities declare war on each other. </p><p>September 1939<br/>
British Ministry of Magic, Under Ground, Beneath Whitehall, London:<br/>
The full Wizengamot convenes.<br/>
Witches and wizards are on their feet, shouting. Many remember the Great War, and the Ministry’s policy of non-intervention, a policy which was partly observed and partly broken with impunity. MfM Spencer-Moon raps them to order.<br/>
Spencer-Moon defends the policy of non-intervention, is shouted at, and gavels the Wizengamot to order once again.<br/>
According to obscure tradition, some of the witches and wizards are in black robes and caps, some in plum. Spencer-Moon, in all black, sits in the centre of the half-round, raised and behind a lectern. He repeats his defence of the non-intervention policy and calls adjournment. They file out to grumbling. </p><p> </p><p>Monday 16 September 1940<br/>
Full hearing of the Wizengamot: </p><p>Uproar. Witches and wizards on their feet, shouting, pointing fingers, fists in the air. Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon also on his feet, gavelling for order.<br/>
The Minister for Magic is completely unlike the gentle, doting grand papa Charlotte has known since she was a swaddled babe. His volume is deafening, his tone stentorian.<br/>
“Silence!” he bellows.<br/>
The uproar barely subsides.<br/>
“The policy of the British Magical Community regarding the Muggle war is and shall continue to be non-intervention!”<br/>
Phoebe and Charlotte, instantly full to the point of vomiting with the roaring of the plum-gowned witches and wizards, tumble arse-over-teakettle into another memory. </p><p>11 May 1941:<br/>
Phoebe and Charlotte fall in behind a cohort of witches and wizards, who are themselves following Charlotte’s grandfather. Tower Bridge is on their left. They walk briskly. Pillars of smoke rise to the sky everywhere, but the greatest pall is to the west. That is the direction in which the troupe heads, with purpose.  They walk for more than half an hour along Muggle roads that follow the river. Charlotte’s grandfather and the witches and wizards in his entourage are impeccably disguised as Muggles and attract no attention along the way.<br/>
“What’s that?” Phoebe whispers, though, of course, they cannot be heard.<br/>
“That’s the Muggle Parliament. It’s their government. Like the Ministry.”<br/>
The roof is collapsed and the building is burning.<br/>
“Merlin’s pants, I had no idea,” Phoebe whispers to Charlotte.<br/>
“I heard stories, but I didn’t know, either,” Charlotte replies.<br/>
They don’t know how the Pensieve works. They experience a sensation of the ground shifting beneath them. They see Charlotte’s grandfather and the entourage in another street. A sign on a white brick wall calls it Ebury Street.<br/>
There is little bomb damage, but the smoke is thick in the air. The Minister for Magic stamps his feet and makes a gesture, and a small dwelling appears between the Muggle terrace houses. A young couple run down the steps with two children in tow.<br/>
“You are all right, then,” Leonard Spencer-Moon says to them, with a tone of authority Charlotte has never heard from him.<br/>
They are apparently all right. A healer in the Minister’s entourage does a Cheering Charm and provides them with Pepperup Potion. Another Ministry factotum produces a charcuterie board with charmed cheeses, Dragon liver pate, smoked Winged Board ham, hard tack, and sourdough bread slices.<br/>
The memory abruptly shifts again, and Phoebe and Charlotte feel yanked about.<br/>
Leonard Spencer-Moon is standing in a tight, small room that has an underground feeling. He faces a fat man seated behind a small desk full of Muggle telephones and stacked high with parchment.<br/>
“Ah, the other minister, I see,” the fat mat drawls sarcastically, in what Phoebe instantly recognises as an upper-class accent. “Changed your mind yet?”<br/>
“On the contrary, Prime Minister,” replies Charlotte’s grandfather, “I merely came by to express my condolences.”<br/>
“Condolences!” the fat mat bellows. “We’ve over fourteen-hundred dead and counting! Commons is bombed and burnt! Condolences mean fuck all! We need your magic! We need it now! Damn your condolences! Damn your condolences to bloody fucking hell!”<br/>
Now it is Charlotte’s grandfather’s turn to bellow.<br/>
“Mister Churchill! As I have previously explained, Europe is full of witches and wizards! The whole world is full of us! We have voluntarily sequestered ourselves since the seventeenth century! What do you imagine would happen were we to take sides now? Array ourselves with our respective Muggle governments, make war alongside them, against each other? Incalculable, unconscionable destruction!”<br/>
“And how exactly would you characterise the nature of the destruction currently occurring, Mister Spencer-Moon?” Churchill shouts, slapping the palms of his fleshy hands on the little desk. One of the telephones begins to ring but he ignores it.<br/>
“My condolences are heartfelt but my position is beyond my power to change and remains inalterable.”<br/>
The telephone continues ringing imperiously.<br/>
Churchill visibly deflates and softens.<br/>
“Very well, Leonard, stay a moment for a drink.” Grunting and heaving himself up, he fetches a couple tumblers and a decanter, and pours. Leonard Spencer-Moon, who has been standing the whole time, seats himself in a cordovan leather wing-backed chair facing the tiny desk.<br/>
Phoebe and Charlotte watch in gape-mouthed awe as gin is drunk, and drunk again, and again. The telephone never stops ringing.<br/>
At last, Charlotte’s grandfather rises.<br/>
“Best wishes, Winston. Sorry.”<br/>
“Bugger off, you bastard.”<br/>
Leonard Spencer-Moon throws a bit of Floo Powder into the tiny stove against the stone wall and vanishes. Phoebe and Charlotte tumble chaotically into another memory. </p><p>January 1943<br/>
Hither Green, Catford, South London:<br/>
Phoebe and Charlotte trot along behind Charlotte’s grandfather, who is alone this time. He stops before a row of dingy houses. He stamps his right foot. He claps his hands to his sides. He puts his feet as far apart as his shoulders and clasps his hands behind his back. It is a perfect impersonation of a Muggle colour sergeant on the parade ground. In response, a little Tudor structure pushes aside and appears between the modern dwellings.<br/>
Phoebe and Charlotte glean that the magical couple who run into the street are called the Leverings. They lost their two children in the bombing. Apparently the Muggles killed include more than forty children and teachers from a place called the Sandhurst Road School. Leonard Spencer-Moon offers the condolences of the Ministry of Magic to the Leverings. Phoebe and Charlotte watch him as he walks away and turns a corner. Glancing about to see that he is not observed, he sits in the rubble, puts his face in his hands, and weeps. </p><p>25 December 1976<br/>
Morning<br/>
Phoebe: Bloody hell.<br/>
Charlotte: Merlin’s pants. Bloody hell is right. Let’s get out of here before the grownups wake up.<br/>
They close the door to the study gently behind them and retrace their steps to the kitchen. Charlotte’s family are already seated round the wooden table and the elves are plating Christmas Morning breakfast. Calls of, “Ah, there you are, you two!” and “Happy Christmas!” ring out. The breakfast looks delicious, but, to Phoebe and Charlotte, the sausages smell like burning flesh. </p><p>25 December 1976<br/>
Late morning<br/>
Charlotte has received a previously-owned, lightly used, good condition Nimbus 1000 from her doting grandfather. Her parents disapprove and are worried at first, but allow it. In the walled garden behind the terrace house (unplottable and invisible to the Muggle neighbours, but you nevertheless must be discrete), Charlotte is doing slow, low-level loop-the-loops. She glows in ecstasy. Phoebe is laughing to the point of crying, and waiting for her turn on the broomstick. It is a happy Christmas.</p>
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